标签： Oceania

A shocking violent sexual assault case has concluded in Victoria’s County Court, with a 34-year-old Fijian national sentenced to 16 years and four months behind bars for breaking into a disabled stranger’s home and raping her in an attack a judge has labeled every woman’s worst nightmare.

Samuela Turaganivalu, who entered Australia two years prior under a seasonal employment program to work in regional farms and factories, carried out the brutal attack in the early hours of November 17, 2024. Court documents outline that the offender had met a dating partner for drinks at a local hotel earlier that night, and when she left without him, he began repeatedly attempting to contact her via phone. He eventually located a residential property he incorrectly assumed she was staying at, and when he could not gain entry, he ripped the side mirrors off a parked car outside before climbing over the back fence of a neighboring home and sneaking in through an unlocked back door.

Inside the property lived the 49-year-old victim, a woman living with both physical and intellectual disabilities who had spent years building her independent life away from her family. Turaganivalu, described by Judge Gerard Mullaly as a large, physically powerful man, woke the victim and immediately launched a brutal assault, punching her repeatedly in the face before raping her anally. After the attack, he threatened to return and kill her if she contacted police, leaving the victim in such extreme terror that she did not call emergency services directly, instead alerting a close friend who placed the call to triple-zero.

Turaganivalu was arrested the next day initially in connection with the damaged car, interviewed by investigators, and released from custody before police linked him to the sexual assault. Just two days after the attack, on November 19, law enforcement intercepted him at Melbourne Airport where he was attempting to board a one-way flight back to Fiji to escape prosecution.

The case went to a jury trial in June this year, where Turaganivalu admitted to assaulting the victim but denied committing rape. The jury rejected his version of events and found him guilty of all major charges. In his sentencing remarks, Judge Mullaly harshly condemned Turaganivalu’s actions, calling the break-in and assault “heinous, frightening behaviour” that aligned with the most common and devastating fear shared by women globally.

“ That someone with criminal, violent intent breaks into their house, overpowering them and raping them. This is every woman’s nightmare,” Judge Mullaly told the court.

During the trial, the victim spoke publicly about the irreversible damage Turaganivalu inflicted on her life. “I wish I could have my old life back, but I cannot,” she said, explaining that she was forced to leave a job she loved because she now struggles with crippling anxiety about returning to her home after dark. The victim’s parents added that they spent decades supporting their daughter to build the hard-won independence she cherished, and that Turaganivalu destroyed that progress in a single night of violence.

In court, Judge Mullaly echoed this pain, telling the offender: “They spent a lifetime building their daughter’s independence only for you Mr Turaganivalu to dismantle their efforts in one night. Her parents have had to assist her more than previously because she now lacks confidence. You, of course, are the only one to blame for that.”

Turaganivalu, who has no prior criminal convictions in either Australia or Fiji, and was raised in a supportive family and once worked as a competitive rugby player, showed no visible reaction when the sentence was handed down. Along with the 16-year-and-four-month custodial sentence, Judge Mullaly set a non-parole period of 12 years. The court also confirmed that after Turaganivalu completes his prison term, he will almost certainly be deported back to Fiji.

In a sweeping, coordinated crackdown on Australia’s rapidly growing black market for unregulated tobacco and nicotine products, the Australian Border Force (ABF) has led hundreds of law enforcement officials in raids targeting more than 100 service stations across the country’s mainland. Dubbed Operation Shorthand, the Tuesday operation brought together personnel from 15 different federal, state, and territory agencies, uniting 300 officers to execute simultaneous search operations across six jurisdictions in an effort to dismantle the country’s multi-million dollar illicit tobacco supply chain. Tony Smith, ABF’s chief of customs compliance and enforcement, emphasized that the operation reflects a persistent, coordinated push to disrupt criminal networks profiting from untaxed tobacco products. “We are all on the heels of those importing, distributing and selling illicit tobacco and vapes, disrupting at every opportunity,” Smith said in a statement following the raids. He added that criminal groups have shifted their distribution strategies in recent years to avoid detection, abandoning traditional tobacco outlets to move their contraband into high-foot-traffic community retail locations, including convenience stores, milk bars, and service stations, prompting the targeted national blitz. While the ABF has not yet released official details on the number of arrests or the full volume of contraband seized during the operation, images published by the agency show large hauls of illegal cigarettes, vapes, and tobacco pouches alongside stacks of untraceable cash generated by black market sales. The crackdown comes as official data shows Australia’s illicit tobacco trade has exploded over the last decade, driven by consumers seeking to avoid the country’s steep federal tobacco excise taxes. New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, published in June, show a dramatic shift in the national tobacco market: the share of all tobacco consumed in Australia that comes from unregulated, illicit sources jumped from just 12% in 2017 to a projected 80% by 2025. Over the same period, overall national nicotine consumption has also risen by 40%, a trend that public health and law enforcement officials have linked directly to the growth of the unregulated black market, where untaxed and often untested nicotine products are sold at far lower prices than legally imported and taxed goods. Law enforcement leaders have framed the operation as the first of a series of ongoing efforts to root out illicit tobacco networks, which deprive the federal government of billions of dollars in annual tax revenue and expose consumers to unregulated nicotine products that pose unquantified public health risks.

More than four years after the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan, a nationwide ban barring girls and young women from secondary and higher education has inflicted quiet, crippling torment on countless Afghan fathers, who watch their daughters’ academic dreams crumble with no path forward. In interviews with Agence France-Presse across the country, dozens of fathers — even deeply religious men who have backed the Taliban’s governance on other issues — choked back tears describing the anguish of seeing their bright, ambitious daughters locked out of classrooms, their futures narrowed by a policy that stands alone in the world.

The Taliban justifies the ban, which has kept secondary schools closed to girls since March 2022, with universities barred to women later that same year, through its specific interpretation of Islamic law. But many devout Afghan fathers reject that framing. “You will never find in the Quran that education is only for men,” one committed religious father told AFP. Another, who openly praised the Taliban for restoring national security and cutting systemic corruption, said he simply could not “find any proper justification for this” sweeping restriction.

All of the fathers interviewed, whose identities are kept confidential for their safety, described persistent emotional turmoil stemming from the ban. Many lose sleep nightly, grappling with how to support daughters who are openly frustrated by the sudden end to their education. Data from a 2023 United Nations survey underscores how widespread this opposition is: nine out of 10 Afghan men questioned said girls’ access to secondary education is a critical priority, and nearly two-thirds view supporting a daughter’s education as a pious, religious duty. Some men who have openly protested the ban have already been imprisoned, and the Taliban government has not responded to AFP’s requests for comment on the policy, which officials have repeatedly called temporary despite its four-year duration. UN estimates indicate at least one million girls have already been directly harmed by the secondary education restrictions.

For many fathers, the dread of their daughters’ final day of primary school looms larger every day. Ahmad, a 40-year-old engineer from northern Afghanistan whose own wife — a former secondary school mathematics professor — can no longer work under the Taliban’s rules, said he never imagined he would watch his four daughters face a lifetime of effective illiteracy. Stopping education after sixth grade, he explained, leaves girls completely unprepared to navigate the demands of 21st-century life. With his eldest daughter approaching the end of primary school, clandestine underground classes cost more than half his monthly salary, leaving emigration as the only seeming option. Once on track to resettle his family in the United States after working for an international organization, his path was blocked by former President Donald Trump’s immigration restrictions, and European nations that regularly denounce the Taliban’s gender policies have also refused the family visas. Leaving illegally carries too much risk, Ahmad said, and his daughters constantly ask when they will depart, unaware that their parents’ hope is fading fast.

Across Kabul province, Mohammad, a 42-year-old doctor in a small town, spent four years searching for a workaround to the ban after his two daughters, aged 12 and 14, reached the end of primary school. He once dreamed of sending them to top international universities, arguing that “for the development of Afghanistan we need women, not only for the home.” He first considered sending them across the border to Pakistan for schooling, but the border was sealed following intensified cross-border hostilities, closing that path. He now pays $153 a month — a steep sum for most Afghan families — for his daughters to attend a private religious school that secretly teaches general academic courses alongside religious studies. The school issues no official graduation certificates, and Mohammad lives in constant fear that Taliban inspectors will discover the secret classes and detain his daughters. Still, he tells his girls, “While I’m alive, I will find a solution for your education.”

In southern Kandahar province, the Taliban’s historic stronghold, restrictions are even harsher: some girls are pulled out of primary school early if they are considered physically mature. N, a father who moved his family to Kabul for work, has a 12-year-old daughter with a passionate interest in astronomy who recently made a solar system collage and peppered him with questions about gravity. When he told her she would learn these topics in school, she replied, “How can I learn… if I cannot go beyond grade six.” N now pays for underground classes and online computer and design courses to keep his daughter learning, but declining international aid has squeezed household incomes across Afghanistan, and he says opportunities for secret education are shrinking by the day. He hides his stress from his daughter, who does not know how precarious her continued learning has become.

For M, a devout logistics manager from a working-class background who supports the Taliban’s work on security and anti-corruption, the pain of the ban has become unbearable. His 13-year-old daughter was forced to leave school earlier this year, and on a recent family holiday, while everyone else celebrated, she locked herself in her room crying. Beyond the education ban, girls are barred from public parks and recreation, leaving her with almost no opportunities for social activity. M takes her out to a restaurant once a week just to get her out of the house, but when she falls into deep despair, he admitted, “I go to another room and… I hide to cry.” He spent years saving to move the family to Iran so his daughter could study there, but the ongoing war in that country ended those plans. He enrolled her in a Quranic school to give her some social contact, but she recently stopped attending, telling him, “Even if I continue, there will be no future for me.”

In Kabul, Nasir, 47, and his wife — a former teacher — have turned their home into a makeshift school for their daughters, using salvaged secondhand high school textbooks to keep their learning on track. They enforce a strict daily routine, waking the girls at the same time they would get up for formal school and sticking to a regular class schedule. But Nasir confides that his younger daughter, who saw her education cut short at 15, struggles with depression and often lacks the motivation to continue learning alone at home. The academic trophies his daughters won in primary school sit on the family’s home bookshelf next to their textbooks, a quiet reminder of what has been lost. Recently, the girls started attending secret outdoor classes in the neighborhood, after tutoring younger children in their apartment building for extra practice. “We have sleepless nights” worrying about their safety and their futures, Nasir said. “This regime does not want educated people. When will we go back to a normal life?”